Scottish Sorrows

1971 Edinburgh, Scotland

Coauthor: Theo Botschuijver, Sean Wellesley-Miller

Production: Eventstructure Research Group, Amsterdam

The 1971 Edinburgh Festival featured a city council street-lighting repair van completely covered in tartan-printed plastic. During the festival this vehicle drove around the streets of Edinburgh. From its upper platform a tartan, plastic Supertube flapped about in the air. Within the vehicle a high-powered PA system broadcast the sounds of classical bagpipe music.

The van had a high-powered Mitralux slide projector mounted to its upper platform. After sunset this mobile sculptural intervention projected tartan patterns onto the city's buildings as it drove past, making the work an early example of urban ‘projection mapping’.